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Mina Harker
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker (née Murray) is a fictional character from Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel Dracula. In the novel She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and best friends with Lucy Westenra. She visits Lucy in Whitby on July 24 of that year, when schools would have closed for the summer. After her fiancé Jonathan escapes from Count Dracula's castle, Mina travels to Budapest and joins him there. Mina cares for him during his recovery from his traumatic encounter with the vampire and his brides, and the two return to England as husband and wife. Back home, they learn that Lucy has died from a mysterious illness stemming from severe blood loss as the result of repeated attacks by an unknown, blood-drinking animal; — the animal, they learn, was none other than Dracula taking a different shape. Mina and Jonathan join the coalition around Abraham Van Helsing, and turn their attentions to destroying the Count. After Dracula learns of this plot against him, he takes revenge by visiting — and biting — Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, destining her to become a vampire at her death. The rest of the novel deals with the group's efforts to spare her this fate by killing Dracula. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a state of consciousness to a state of semi-trance during which she is telepathically connected with Dracula. Mina then uses her inherent telepathic abilities to track Dracula's movements. Dracula flees back to his castle in Transylvania, followed by Van Helsing's gang, who kill him just before sundown. As a result, Dracula's spell is lifted and Mina freed from the curse. The book closes with a note about Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their first-born son, whom they name Quincey in remembrance of their American friend Quincey Morris, who was killed by Dracula's Szgany minions during the final confrontation. The birth of Jonathan and Mina's son signifies hope and life of the new as the novel heads into the 20th century.Experts Milhousen and Frytopen. In other media Mina (or a similar character) has appeared in most film adaptations of Stoker's novel. In Stoker's original novel, Mina Harker recovers from the vampire's curse upon Dracula's death. However, in many films, books, plays and songs, she does not lose her vampiric abilities. In F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the character is renamed Ellen, due to the copyright issues surrounding this film. In a significant deviation from the original novel, she sacrifices herself to Count Orlok (the film's version of Dracula) so he will be destroyed by the rising sun. Helen Chandler played her in Universal Pictures' Dracula, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the count. In this adaptation, Mina was Dr. Seward's daughter and so it is implied that her name was Mina Seward. This connection was incorporated into Mel Brooks' parody Dracula: Dead and Loving It, in which she is portrayed by Amy Yasbeck. In Hammer Horror's Dracula, Mina was portrayed by Melissa Stribling and was married to Arthur Holmwood instead of Jonathan. The BBC produced a version entitled Count Dracula in 1977. Mina was played by Judi Bowker. The film was fairly faithful to Stoker's original novel, except that it portrayed Mina and Lucy as sisters. Mina was played by Jan Francis in the 1979 film Dracula directed by John Badham, in which she is Van Helsing's daughter. This adaptation also switches Mina's role and makes Lucy - who here is the daughter of Dr. Seward - Jonathan Harker's fiancee and Dracula's primary victim. Mina was portrayed by American actress Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film adaptation of the book, in which she is portrayed as the reincarnation of Dracula's centuries-dead wife, Elisabeta. The character also appears in Alan Moore's comic book series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the 2003 film adaptation of the book, Mina was portrayed by actress Peta Wilson. Unlike the comic, the film adaption's version remained a vampire after Dracula's death. While the comic version has a relationship with Allan Quatermain, the movie version has a past relationship with Dorian Gray, and it is implied that she develops feelings for Special Agent Tom Sawyer over the course of the League's mission. Both comic and movie version also attract the interest of Henry Jekyll's two identities to varying degrees. In the manga Hellsing, a character referred to only as "She" is eventually revealed to be Mina Harker's corpse. She died before Dracula (later Alucard) could be defeated, but because he did not die, the curse was still active in her, which the Doctor exploited to create Millennium's vampires. In 2006 a British television film entitled Dracula aired. In this production Mina is portrayed by Stephanie Leonidas. She is depicted as being a Roman Catholic. Mina was again seen in the television series Demons as a half-vampire, where her full powers came out when she ingested some of Dracula's blood that still flows in her veins, although her 'default' state leaves her blind with psychic abilities that she can use to sense the nature of the demons they are presently facing. In Dracula the Un-dead, co-written by Dacre Stoker, a great-grandnephew of the original author, Mina's son, Quincey, is declared to be a product of rape and Dracula's biologically human son, conceived at some point when Dracula was attacking Mina.Dracula: The Un-dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt In From the Pages of Bram Stoker's Dracula: Harker, written by Tony Lee and endorsed by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, Mina becomes bound to Dracula's spirit as his remaining allies attempt to use her unborn child as his new body. References Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1897 Category:Dracula characters Category:Fictional schoolteachers Category:Characters Category:Horror film characters Category:Heroes Category:Van Helsing characters